Wednesday, July 17, 2013

What is
permaculture? Each book on permaculture that I’ve read tries variously to
encapsulate the idea into a comprehensive description. There is also a
distinction drawn between original, land-based permaculture and later claims
that permaculture principles can have a much broader application. Does
permaculture have a distinct heart or has it just become an umbrella term for
‘green living’?

The very roots of
the idea of permaculture seem to me embedded in the idea that we will look at
how natural ecosystems function and then use that information to create
efficient and sustainable ways of producing our food. Fundamentally then, we
need to observe and understand how ecosystems work. If we haven’t benefitted
from three years at university studying for a degree in biology, environmental
science or suchlike, we’ve got a lot to learn.

I recommend
Patrick Whitefield’s book, The LivingLandscape: How to Read and Understand It and, if you want to
delve further, the ecology module in his Land Course Online which works
as a good foundation course for a Permaculture Design Course (PDC). The book
and/or the course will help you improve your skills of observation. You have to
look carefully as things are not always as they seem.

Have you noticed
how bees, particularly bumblebees, love comfrey flowers? They are often buzzing
around these plants on a warm summer’s day. Do you know how they drink the
nectar? Plants and their pollinators (insects and sometimes birds) have evolved
together, thus a deep flower needs a long-tongued pollinator … or a crafty one.
I’ve recently been reading A Sting in the
Tale by Dave Goulson, now Professor of Biological Services at the
University of Sussex and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. I read that bumblebees that can’t access
deeply stored nectar will often bite little holes at the base of the flower to
gain direct access to it.

In excited
curiosity, I put the book down and almost ran outside to one of our comfrey
patches to check this out. Sure enough, at the base of the deep bell shaped
flower of the comfrey were little frayed holes, browned at the edges in the way
a cut apple discolours, and many bumblebees demonstrating how to hang onto the
side of the plant to siphon off the nectar. Goulson and his colleagues further
noted how bees would somehow leave a scent of their passing so that other bees
wouldn’t waste time and precious energy visiting empty flowers and that this
odoriferous warning expired in the time the plant took to refill with nectar.

Seeing the bees do
something different from what I thought they were doing has taught me to take
time over observation, look a little deeper and not to assume the obvious.
Bumblebees chewing a hole through the side of a flower to create better access
to their food reminds me of those 1960s-style serving hatches between the
kitchen and a hungry family seated at the dining table. Should we all now knock
a hole in our kitchen wall under the guise of permaculture design? ☺
(I’ll return to my question of what permaculture might be in future
blogs.)